Pushkin Press

nd noted with increasing astonishment how little trustworthy information there was concerning this astounding exploit. As had happened to me several times before, I found that to tell the story to others would be the best way of explaining the inexplicable to myself. Such was the origin of my book, which, I can frankly say, has come into being to my own surprise. For, in recounting this odyssey

I breathed freely, purely, and full of sudden delight I felt the air on my lips like a clear drink. It was soft, effervescent air carrying on it the aroma of fruits, the scent of distant islands, and making me feel slightly drunk.

Now, for the first time since I had set foot on the ship’s planks, I knew the blessed joy of reverie, and the other more sensual pleasure of abandoning my body, womanlike, to the softness surrounding me.

I came for,” he said. The best lies stay close to the truth.

Eaumbre—when his name crossed his scaly lips, you felt as though you had the mud of his pond in your ears.

Eaumbre—when his name crossed his scaly lips, you felt as though you had the mud of his pond in your ears.

All things must have an end.
A worm has two

don’t really know what it means to feel like myself

When you say see you tomorrow to someone, it’s because you’re going to keep seeing them. It’s like at school you see everybody because they go to school every day. But when you graduate and you don’t go to school any more, it stops and you don’t see everybody any more. If you want to see somebody, you have to make plans to meet, or even make plans to make plans, and next thing you end up not seeing them any more. That’s what’s going to happen. If you don’t see somebody, you end up never seeing them. And then there’s going to be nothing left of them at all.”

“The worst thing is, you never know when somebody’s going to just disappear.”